


what is all this waiting for?

by cassowarykisses



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Dubious Consent, Fade to Black, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Nightmares, One Shot, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-12 13:19:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5667499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassowarykisses/pseuds/cassowarykisses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rewind has been having nightmares. That isn't surprising, considering that being trapped on a ship with the DJD is nightmare enough for any Cybertronian.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what is all this waiting for?

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU where Rewind-2 was abducted by the DJD to be their personal filmmaker after they finished killing everyone onboard the Lost Light. It was written for sziondaisy on tumblr, because neither of us can let this crackship die. 
> 
> The title is from This Will End by the Oh Hellos.

Rewind has nightmares about the DJD. It's really not uncommon - he has data from all throughout the Autopedia, even some of the classified stuff, and so he knows for a fact that the DJD are among the top ten features of recurring nightmares among Autobots polled by Psychotherapy Services.

The actual details of these nightmares aren't in Rewind's archives, even though he went and tracked down the citation and the report it came from, but he suspects his dreams are a little different from most bots', in the moments between alternating spikes of numbness and terror.

In his dreams, he is with the DJD so long that he runs out of space in his archive, so long that he has to delete his precious, hard-won records in order to catch the perfect spurt of energon, the most artfully agonized screams. Tarn or Kaon always has a hand on his helm, tilting it _just so_ , to get the best angle. In some of the dreams, there is nothing left but their footage. 

The focus of the nightmares is always on the other people suffering, so it’s fine with Rewind, at least relatively speaking, that Vos is in the nightmares too. He’s always a little bit out of the frame when Rewind films - he can’t spoil the shot, of course - so in the dreams he’s distant. Present, but not terrifying. And so when Rewind wakes up and Vos is _right there_ , well, that means he’s woken up from the nightmare. 

He’s back in the real world, in space, with the DJD. 

It’s honestly a lot more boring that Rewind expected, but there’s a lot of space for the Peaceful Tyranny to cross in between targets. He guesses that the confusion and horror of his first couple months on board set a high standard - he remembers Vos dragging him back by his helm, both of them sticky with energon, and then being alone in the dark while the DJD did who knows what on the planet below. There’s plenty of time for the other DJD members to get bored too, for Helex to grab him up from the floor. (Rewind had made the mistake of taking his optics off the secondary arms. He won’t do it again, he promises himself, the bubbling heat of the acid stirring the first bolts of fear in his waking moments for months.)

And then Vos is there, spitting staticky bursts of Neocybex - the most rapid Rewind has ever heard from him - alongside long rushing sentences in Primal Vernacular, too fast for Rewind to access the translation files he knows he has buried somewhere in his storage.

He claws at Helex’s waist like he’s going to clamber up him, and Helex jerks back like Vos is a rusty cybercat. Or maybe like he’s seen Vos climb up mechs before, and then seen the aftermath. Rewind hasn’t, but he’s seen enough to imagine. 

“Alright, alright,” Helex grumbles. “Take him if you want.” He tosses Rewind at the wall, and he tumbles over Vos’s outstretched clawtips and hits the wall. Vos curses in the Primal Vernacular, and scrambles after him. It only takes a moment for Vos to scoop Rewind up in his claws, because even if Vos is not very big as the DJD would count it, he is far larger than Rewind. And anyway, Rewind isn’t going to resist being dragged away, any more than he resisted Helex scooping him up to toy with him. His terror has worn his self-preservation down smooth, so it no longer triggers at everything around him, but it hasn’t eroded it so badly that he would annoy the DJD by _resisting_ them.

Later, in Vos’s quarters, Vos runs his eyes - and his claws - down the scuffs on Rewind’s frame and makes a weird clicking noise in the back of his vocalizer. Rewind is pretty sure it’s disapproval.

“You should have fought back,” Vos says, enunciating slowly and clearly so even Rewind can follow. He’s gotten much better in the weeks - months? He doesn’t really know. In the time he’s been with the DJD. But he’s still not as good as Vos, and likely never will be. After all, Vos wouldn’t want him understanding _everything_ he says.

Rewind doesn’t bother retorting that Helex would have killed him. He would have killed him regardless. Vos will kill him someday, too. Maybe they’ll all kill him together, ha, won’t that be a lark. 

Instead, he plays the footage he’s been reviewing for the past few moments. The corridors of the Peaceful Tyranny are projected on Vos’s walls, moving slowly with Rewind's careful pace, and then the perspective jerks, turning up to Helex’s face, stern as usual, but with optics bright with amusement. The camera jolts again, and then faces Helex’s side. Rewind pauses it here, and clears his vocalizer. It’s staticky with disuse and injury, but Vos says that it makes them match. “He has a crack here,” he says, pointing to a minute fracture along Helex’s side. He zooms in to amplify the image, since he doesn't have much hope that Vos has sharp vision, not with the way his optic glass detaches so easily with the rest of his face, leaving all his fibers exposed. “It’ll repair automatically in a couple of days, but you could’ve pulled it open when you were close to him.”

Vos laughs, bright and buzzing. “There will be other cracks, and other chances,” he tells Rewind, and pulls him close, until their masks almost touch. “I like this side of you. It is a good reminder of what you are.” 

“What am I?” Rewind asks, matching Vos in halting Primal Vernacular. His perpetual numbness makes him feel like he’s forever caught on the edge between apathy and daring.

“ _ **Mine**_ ,” Vos says, in his terribly imperfect Neocybex, and Rewind wants to scream, to pull out Vos’s spark and then his own, to throw himself into space and watch his energon sublimate, anything but accept it as truth. 

He grabs one of the spikes on Vos’s helmet, and he’s teetering, teetering on the edge between this passivity and true suicidal impulses. “Not yet,” he manages, tightening his grip as much his hands, never even meant for the battlefield, will go.

Vos grabs him, and laughs, and they come together.


End file.
